Damon Wayans in "Bamboozled."

MOVIE INFORMATION

With 10 as a must-see, we give this film a: Stars: Damon Wayans, Jada Pinkett Smith, Savion Glover and Tommy Davidson Director: Spike Lee Rated: R, with profanity, graphic violence and partial nudity Length: 104 minutes

ROCHESTERCRITIQUE

Having seen this film, how would you rate it? 10 5 9 4 8 3 7 2 6 1

By Marshall Fine
Gannett News Service

(October 27, 2000) -- Spike Lee happens to be the most provocative, in-your-face filmmaker working today, as his newest film, Bamboozled, shows.

An acid-drenched satire about the state of blacks in network television today, Bamboozled embraces bad taste in an effort to get across a larger, much more troubling point.

Pierre Delacroix (Damon Wayans) is a highbrow Harvard graduate who has hit the glass ceiling in his job as a television network executive at an upstart network meant to remind viewers of UPN or the WB.

None of the shows he's created -- shows that reflect the black middle class as personified by Cosby -- have made it on the air. The one that did, died a quick death when it was pitted against Seinfeld. A buppie with a severe identity crisis, Delacroix finds himself being challenged to come up with something new, something street, something urban for the network.

His only hope, Delacroix decides, is to create something so obviously wrong that he will be fired and won't have to quit. What he comes up with is way beyond the pale: Mantan, the New Millennium Minstrel.

Hiring a pair of street performers, Man Ray (Savion Glover) and Womack(Tommy Davidson), Delacroix recycles the kind of minstrel comedy popular during the Civil War era and into the mid-20th century: blackface comedy that drew its humor from comic stereotyping of blacks as ignorant, lazy and dishonest.

He christens his stars Mantan (after black movie comic Mantan Moreland) and Sleep 'n' Eat and sits back to await the explosion.

But Delacroix's plan goes horribly awry when his boss, Dunwitty (Michael Rapaport), falls immediately in love with the idea: "Though offensive, there's a social message," he says. Before Delacroix knows what's happening he's shepherding the show on to the air -- and then watching as its increasingly outrageous content becomes a national craze, until people of all colors are wearing blackface and bandying the "N" word as though it were just another piece of contemporary slang.

If you've ever watched the black comedies on the WB or UPN or even seen The Kenan and Kel Show on Nickelodeon, you understand where Lee's anger comes from.

Too many of these shows follow the comic precepts of their minstrel forebears, whether the film work of Step 'n Fetchit or the radio and TV comedy of Amos 'n' Andy. Their characters were sex-obsessed and childlike, constantly mugging and rolling their eyes.

This, as Lee's film points out, is not all that far removed from minstrel days. The idea of the minstrel show was to debase and trivialize black culture -- to both black and white audiences. It's a vicious, self-perpetuating cycle, one that theoretically helps turn back the clock on the civil-rights advances blacks have made in the past 50 years.

Still, Lee's politically incorrect comedy too often is painted in broad, unfunny strokes. Lee is better with the big concepts than the details -- such as individual jokes. Even as he finds ways to insert trademark shots (where both the camera and the actor it is watching are rolling on the same wheels), he can't quite create the kind of dialogue that has the pungent, edgy ring of authority and truth.

Indeed, much of the best (and worst) dialogue seems improvised. Rapaport's take on the TV honcho who believes he's in touch with the street is a wonderful blend of the canny and the dim; with stronger dialogue, the character would steal the film. Similarly, rapper Big Black Africa (rapper Mos Def) who can't believe that people are embracing the minstrel idea, sounds as though he's making up his dialogue and not very well, either.

However, Bamboozled often works on the sheer energy in Lee's effort to outrage. At the center of the film are several strong performances that transcend the weakness of the writing.

Wayans seems strung tighter than a tennis racket as a self-hating black man who can't decide which culture to pretend to be a part of; Jada Pinkett Smith, as his assistant, also captures the dilemma of achieving sudden success, but with a morally repugnant product.

Glover, perhaps the finest tap dancer in the world today, takes the underwritten role of Man Ray/Mantan and finds the tragedy in it, revealing the performer's obvious gifts, even as he places them in service of the devil. Davidson, as his sidekick, also balances disgust and avarice in playing the suddenly wealthy performer who realizes that he has sold out.

Scattershot but thought provoking, Bamboozled is all over the lot, but manages to convey a finely honed anger amid its less cohesive elements.

Spike Lee, no matter his faults as a filmmaker, has made a film you'll feel compelled to discuss afterward.